However, I went to the Amazon US site today to look up a book and what did I see right on the start page. Dildos, vibrators and other sex toys with the helpful information that people who had searched for the same items as me (i.e. “dirty” books deranked during amazonfail) had also purchased those.

So Amazon apparently sees no problem in pushing sex toys at me on their front page, but gay and lesbian content is somehow dirty. This does not compute.

Could this be a long standing system in place that handles ssearches from countries and regions that forbid specific items? I know that even Canada has their own take on what is considered appropriate material or not and China for sure. Depsite amazon having regional sites like amazon.ca They still need to tweak search results on amazon.com to fit a region?

It irks me, all these toady bastards constantly trying to protect us little childrens from bad and sinfull things.

(I confess to bias in that I like the Independent as a newspaper: I suspect some people would find it leaning a bit leftwards.)

I’m actually thrilled at the grassroots response, despite plenty of people decrying it as a rush to judgment. Direct outrage over the disenfranchisement of minorities who are still under siege in many parts of the world is a good thing. I do not think it detracts from the struggle for human equality. Far from.

Totally agreed.

I personally do not think this was an “innocent” glitch …

Also agreed. I thought Mary Hodder phrased this very well in her guest post on TechCrunch:

If all this seems like a problem, and it should, it’s because Amazon is using algorithms, which rely on their classification system, with various statistics like “Sales Rank” to rank products in search results on the site. These algorithms and classifications have points of view. Their point of view, revealed this week, is that “positive references to sexual orientation == gay” is “adult” in nature….

The bar for ethics in creating algorithms and classification systems should be very high. #AmazonFail proved it’s not, at least at Amazon. I would venture that Amazon’s classification and algorithm system have more of these discriminatory assumptions, and while their tagging system does allow users to correct for some of this, Amazon is using it’s internal classification system in it’s filters, not user tagging, that I can tell.

It’s a classic case of technology invisibly reinforcing the oppression of broader society. As you say, it’s not exactly sinister — it wasn’t like somebody at Amazon consciously said “oh let’s make LGBTs, feminists, and people with disabilities invisible!” But that was the effect.

Kudos to all of us for standing up against it.

jon